Protests and such

Here's the story I read yesterday:

KING, N.C. – The Christian flag is everywhere in the small city of King: flying in front of barbecue joints and hair salons, stuck to the bumpers of trucks, hanging in windows and emblazoned on T-shirts.

The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can't appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park.

The city council decided last month to remove the flag from above the monument in Central Park after a resident complained, and after city leaders got letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State urging them to remove it.

That decision incensed veterans groups, churches and others in King, a city of about 6,000 people 15 miles north of Winston-Salem. Ray Martini, 63, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, launched a round-the-clock vigil to guard a replica Christian flag hanging on a wooden pole in front of the war memorial.

Since Sept. 22, the vigil has been bolstered by home-cooked food delivered by supporters, sleeping bags and blankets donated by a West Virginia man and offers of support from New York to Louisiana.

"This monument stands as hallowed ground," said Martini, a tall, trim man with a tattoo on his right arm commemorating the day in 1988 when he became a born-again Christian. "It kills me when I think people want to essentially desecrate it."

The protesters are concerned not only about the flag, which was one of 11 flying above the memorial when it was dedicated six years ago, but about a metal sculpture nearby depicting a soldier kneeling before a cross.

"I won't let it fall," Martini said. "I have already told the city, before you can take it down, I'll tie myself to it and you can cut me down first."
The identity of the resident who complained about the flag, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, has not been made public. But the state chapter of the ACLU has no problem with the vigil.

"We were concerned when the city was sponsoring the Christian flag, but we don't have any concern with veterans groups displaying the flag," legal director Katy Parker said. "We think it's great the city is offering citizens a chance to express their opinions."


The protesters, though, aren't satisfied with the vigil. They're planning an Oct. 23 rally in support of their ultimate goal, which is for the city to restore the Christian flag to the permanent metal pole on the memorial.

There is no part of me that understands the way the veterans feel because I've never been a veteran, never fought in a war, never been shot at. I don't know the attachment the persons feel about the flag or the monument. To offer opininon aobut that would be dumb.

But this I know: We have to reach a point, it seems, that we understand what the courts are trying to do and to operate within those laws. In other words, if they won't let us -- us being Christians -- operate within the grounds of city, state or federal law, then we must as individuals do it ourselves. As near I understand it, constitutional law can not and does not interfere with me praying, reading scripture or whatever as long as the state does not sponsor it. That goes for schools and such as well.

So we must stand up on our own. Buy flags for every grave in that cemetery and plant them there. There's nothing anyone can do about it. We must stage our rallies and our protests individually. They can't stop that.

But in the end, I believe Jesus would just as soon we spent our time praying for those who would stop us, praying for those who are our enemies, praying for those who would be offended by such.

Loving those who oppose you is the more difficult knot to tie, but it is the one Jesus would have us do.